Surrogate
by ncfan
Summary: -Byakuya x Nanao, Byakuya x Hisana, Shunsui x Nanao- They will both shut their eyes and try to see someone else.


**Characters**: Nanao, Byakuya, Hisana (in spirit), Shunsui (vaguely referred to; not by name)**  
Summary**: They will both shut their eyes and try to see someone else.**  
Pairings**: Byakuya x Nanao, Byakuya x Hisana, Shunsui x Nanao**  
Warnings/Spoilers**: Spoilers for Soul Society arc; rated for sexual situations**  
Timeline**: Pre-manga**  
Author's Note**: I am evil. _Yes_, I am.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

His lips are dry and hot on her throat, arm tight around her small waist, and Nanao wonders if Hisana noticed the same thing. No doubt she did.

Pale and thin and dark, she supposes she reminds Byakuya a little—only a little—of his late wife. Any woman he looks twice at would have to remind him, one way or another, of Hisana, so Nanao wonders why he doesn't just turn to that little girl he adopted out of the Academy, who's Hisana's likeness down to the life. Nanao knows she bears only the most cursory of resemblances to the woman—alike only in dense, blue-black hair, bluish-violet eyes and pallid skin and slight, frail build. Byakuya's attention is drawn, when drawn at all, to small, petite, dark-haired women, trying to find Hisana's face in theirs.

The darkness hides both their faces, allows them to paint on different faces to make up for their inadequacies to the other.

There's no love here, if no aversion either. They've been friends since childhood, commiserating and studying together though never exceptionally close; the night has somehow become a pell-mell amalgam of the intellectual, of tentative exploration, of balm to hurts, of some level of physical desire and of the short-lived escape, likely never to be explored between them again.

When the door was shut and the dim lights extinguished entirely, curtains drawn shut around the windows so that moonlight only shone in from around the edges, the first thing he did was gently slide her glasses down off of her nose and not even bother to put them down before cupping her face in his hands and kissing her, long and slow and neither hard nor soft but in such a way that Nanao almost felt like she was being suffocated.

Nothing was said, nothing, and Nanao could feel the end of her glasses digging into her thin scalp, the way his fingers never would. Her knees were weak though her heart never skipped a beat. The glasses had to go, Nanao supposes; the little moonlight left shining off of them could only have reminded Byakuya more strongly that this wasn't his wife in his arms. It makes no difference to her; in the darkness, her weak eyesight is about as acute without her glasses as they would be with them, and she can blur him just a little more. He took her in his arms, noiseless, and that's how they came to be on the bed.

Nothing will ever be said of this. Discretion is a virtue, one they both value highly.

Nanao opens her eyes and looks at him and finds, like a gray-eyed mirror, Byakuya has for whatever reason done the same.

It's still silent, the way an empty room would be or the way a tomb is when nobody visits, and it may as well be empty since neither one of them are fit to make a sound. No need to attract attention, and neither see the point. Their tongues have been ripped out for tonight.

Their eyes lock for a moment, a long moment for a ship crossing a sea of time. If Byakuya feels any desperation or urgency, he hides it well, Nanao will give him that—there is instead only a question in his calm, forthright gaze, reserved but insistent.

_Well?_

Nanao wishes he wouldn't act like a gentleman in this situation, and bites her tongue, before remembering it's mute, to keep from telling him so. She didn't come here for that, nor for arguments or strife.

Silently, she nods, betraying a sudden spurt of nervousness in her flaring nostrils and a tightening of the muscles in her jaw.

Byakuya's neutral gaze softens slightly at the sight of her anxiety. He may have been married for five years in the past, but this is the first time for her. The closest he comes to speaking all night is a promise to be fair, and Nanao hears it, loud and clear. Nanao wonders if he remembers someone else at the sight of her normally self-assured demeanor slipping away like a brittle ceramic mask. Hisana, Nanao can well guess from the brief acquaintance the two had, was a virgin coming to the marriage bed; she was so incredibly shy around men that day at her wedding, as the two women clasped hands and spoke briefly. It would be very interesting to know if he ever thinks this is sacrilege, trying to superimpose Hisana's image over her own.

But he's not using her any less than she's using him; they both subscribe to the same excuse.

After what feels like an eternity to an increasingly tense Nanao, taking her assent for what it is, Byakuya pushes her back down onto the bed, carefully, maybe blurring her with a woman whose health had been considerably less robust, noticeably more delicate.

He suddenly, almost clinically, brushes tendrils of her long, loose hair away from her bare, moon-white flanks, fingers lingering too long over the skin and burning like licks of flame.

She's confused until she remembers that Hisana had short hair. And she wonders again why Byakuya steadfastly refuses to touch Rukia.

Nanao licks dry lips, knowing he's still trying to find Hisana in the depths of her eyes; if Byakuya's ever been with another woman since his wife died, they've likely known the same thing. The name he constantly finds himself biting back, prayer-like, isn't hers, Nanao knows. She tries to wet her lips before Byakuya leans down and kisses her again, one mouth conquered by another and sharing breath, long in his own fashion and softer than last time, cutting off that small voice of protest back in her mind but not speculation. She wanted this, but still wonders.

And belatedly, Nanao half-heartedly wishes that this could be genuine, before she ceases to care.

They will both shut their eyes tonight, and try to see someone else.


End file.
